Travis and I met at lunch to figure out what we were supposed to do: go to band practice and get in even worse trouble with our guidance counselor, or get our guidance counseling session over with and incur the wrath of our behemoth drummer. We didn’t have any classes with each other for the rest of the day, so we had to make a game plan before lunch was over.
“Why don’t we just pop our heads into Purple Hair’s office after school, tell her we’re very sorry, but we can’t miss band rehearsal with our battle of the bands coming up, and just ask to reschedule?” Travis said. We had started calling her Purple Hair since her hyphenated last name was too obnoxiously long.
“Eh, I don’t know,” I replied, “I’d rather avoid making up a fake excuse for why we can’t be there, and we can’t exactly tell her the truth. If we told her we had to meet our drummer, she would inevitably ask more questions until we told her said drummer was also the janitor. That would lead to telling her said janitor is secretly using the school’s band room to rehearse when he should be working. And that would lead to telling her about the ‘demon’ bodyguard agreement. And Charlie made it pretty clear that we could not tell anyone about that whole arrangement.”
“In that case, we’re going to have to stand someone up. There’s no other way around it,” Travis said, “So would you rather ditch Charlie or Purple Hair?
I didn’t know what the consequences of standing Charlie up would be, but I knew they couldn’t be good. Purple Hair, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as frightening. Being in trouble with her wouldn’t be ideal, but what was she going to do if we didn’t show up? Call our parents?
Wait a minute, I thought, that might actually be a problem. When Travis and I first started rehearsing with Charlie a month ago, we both told our parents we had joined an “after school music program,” which was technically true. That was enough for Travis’s parents, who are out of the house so much for work they probably wouldn’t have noticed he was coming home late regardless.
The “after school music program” explanation was enough for my parents at first, but like I said before, that was probably just because they were getting tired of listening to me rehearse at home. After a week of said “after school program,” my mom started to revert back to her usual ways of asking me for a graduate thesis about every minute detail of my day. It was easier to avoid this when I took the bus home from school, since I could just run straight to my room and put on my headphones. But now that she was picking both Travis and me up from school, I no longer had that luxury. For 15 solid minutes a day, we were her captive audience. Well, more like captive interviewees, I guess. We had to tell her something, otherwise she’d get suspicious, but since we promised Charlie we wouldn’t tell anyone about our actual arrangement, we were forced to somewhat…editorialize.
To make a long story short, my mom thinks Travis and I have joined our middle school’s choir. In reality, budget constraints and lack of interest forced the Greater Sturluson School District to cut our choir this year and merge it with the Sturluson Middle School choir. Now the handful of choir singers left from our school take one of those short, special ed busses to Sturluson to rehearse. The school district sent a newsletter to parents about this change, but I may have accidentally dropped mine down a storm drain, so my mom still doesn’t know about this.
“If we stand Purple Hair up, she’ll probably call our parents, and my mom will find out she hasn’t been driving us home from choir rehearsal for the past month. I’ll either have to come clean after being found out, or be grounded. Probably both,” I responded.
“Well we can’t spill the beans, that’d be breaking our deal, so we’ll go to Purple Hair’s office and stand Charlie up?” Travis said.
“If we stand Charlie up, we’d be breaking the deal as well, since we told him we’d rehearse with him every day after class,” I objected.
Travis threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Well, clearly you’re the expert here since you’ve been shooting down all my ideas. I give up, what’s the correct answer, genius?”
“Uhhhhhh,” I replied as I stared at my half-eaten sandwich.
Travis rolled his eyes as he stood up to leave, “You know what? This isn’t even my problem. I’m going to rehearsal like normal. My parents are out of town until next week, so if Purple Hair calls them I’ll just delete the message on the answering machine when I get home today. Good luck, man.”
“Wait a minute!” I blurted out, “Travis, you’re a genius! You can go to rehearsal, explain the situation to Charlie and talk him out of killing me, and I can go to Purple Hair’s office and pretend I don’t know where you are!” I thought I felt a quick sting on my left shoulder with the rash as I said this.
Travis stopped as he was beginning to walk away and turned his head back toward me with a slight look of skepticism. “You’re going to lie to a school administrator? You’ve never been in this much trouble as it stands already. Now you’re going to double down and lie to her face? How do I know you’re not going to break down and narc on me?”
I just shrugged and said “I guess the same way I know you won’t let Charlie lose his cool and drag my soul to hell or whatever.”
Travis took a moment to think before saying “Touché. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.”
Wishful thinking, I thought. I was breaking my agreement with Charlie for the first time. I didn’t know if I would make it to the next morning.